He laughed. “I am older than I am wise, Your Majesty.”
Kleopatra laughed with her Kinsman, but it was a hollow laugh, one that she felt only in her mouth. Caesar, while promising her the world, was daily giving her new causes for concern and doubt. She did not know if she doubted his loyalty to her or his very sanity. She only knew that she must obey the warning chills that shot through her when she heard of his recent actions. Someone-it was not known who-had placed monarch’s crowns on Caesar’s statues on the new Rostra, and the Tribunes of the People had ordered them removed. The next day, those same tribunes arrested a group of ruffians who were protesting the removal of the crowns by gathering in front of the statues and chanting the word “king.” Caesar was so annoyed by the citizens’ arrests that he informed the tribunes that they were henceforth removed from both office and senate. But the very next day, an even larger mob gathered in the Forum to protest their removal.
“They simply do not know what they want,” Caesar had sighed. “And so I must do what I want.”
“Yes, do as you wish, Caesar, but protect yourself against those who disagree!” she had said. “The history of Rome is drenched in blood.”
Kleopatra had told him of Servilia’s warning, but Caesar said that women were always worried over such things, and that is why, Amazons excepted, they would never be allowed to fight in wars. Calpurnia, too, was always after him these days to watch his back, poor old dear. “I believe it is you three women who are in conspiracy against me,” Caesar said, “and not those few ingrate senators who always need something about which to complain.”
An astrologer had taken the trouble to warn him that he was surrounded by those planning evil against him, but Caesar dismissed him. “They shall have to march to Parthia to commit it,” he laughed, “and fight legions of my men before they might reach me.”
To make matters worse, he had recently dismissed the elite Spanish guard recruited in his last war and who attended to him personally, because he did not like to hear their footsteps trailing him. “It interferes with the thinking process,” he had said.
“You are pushing Fortune too far,” Kleopatra had told him.
“That is an earned privilege,” he had answered.
Now he wore a slack smile that seldom left his face as he talked to those Romans who approached the throne. Throne! The Roman people despised the very word and its connotations, and yet the senators had given this privilege to Caesar for all the city to see. Whenever he was before a large assembly nowadays, he was seated like a king upon the gilded chair, raised above all. The same image that inspired awe in Kleopatra’s own subjects-that of an illustrious being given power and position above all other earthly creatures by Divine Sanction-inspired a palpable unease in Caesar’s countrymen. The dictator and his throne were a busy topic of conversation around the city. It struck Kleopatra that this was part of his enemies’ plan; they baited Caesar with the trappings of monarchy and made it appear that he was usurping the powers of his own volition. Hopefully, the drama that was about to unfold would help delineate the wishes of the majority of the people. She wished that she had thought to station spies throughout the crowd today to hear what whispers slid in and out of Roman mouths.
The bright, sharp sound of a trumpet interrupted her worries, and Caesar raised his right hand to begin the ceremony. Three dozen priests of the Brotherhood of the Wolf marched into the Forum, two of them carrying a big white goat whose legs were bound to a stick. The men wore only goatskin loincloths, and had oiled and shaved their bodies so that their skin gleamed. Kleopatra recognized a few senators among them, the highest-ranking men in Rome, who had recently been inducted into the priesthood to pay honor to Caesar. Two of them untied the goat, whose deep throaty cries only got louder, and the crowd began to imitate the beast, drowning out its bleating.
“Baah, baah, baah,” they yelled as if mocking the animal.
The high priest-or so Kleopatra assumed because he wore a goat’s head as a headdress-held his arms up to the crowd in a request for quiet. As they settled, he called out in prayer: “Inuus, who makes fertile the men and women of Mighty Rome, accept our offering and hear our prayers. Receive the honors we bestow upon you this day as you have for every year since time out of mind. Grant us this day that every Roman man finds his gods-given masculinity, and that every Roman wife shall receive the seed to become a mother. For the glory of the god and for the glory of Rome!”
The throng began to chant the name of the god again, its syllables making a drumbeat that reverberated through the Forum. One priest held the goat by its rear legs and the other slit its throat, letting the animal’s blood drain into a silver bowl at Caesar’s feet. Though he was several feet above them, Caesar had to draw his long legs back so that his toga was not splattered. The chanting broke into screams so loud that Kleopatra wondered if a riot was breaking out. Her heart quickened. Caesar was alone on his throne, virtually unprotected as always. Her first thought was to jump from the bleachers and throw her body upon his. But Caesar was smiling and did not seem threatened at all. She grabbed Hammonius’s arm, and he patted her hand and pointed to the north end of the Forum.
Two lines of men in loincloths came charging up the Via Sacra, running into the Forum shouting the name of the god and carrying goat-hide whips that they flailed above their heads. They must have searched out the most virile among them for the ceremony, for they were mostly as young and taut as Olympians, but without the dignity of those athletes. They seemed to Kleopatra to be drunk, hooting and screaming at any women they could reach and striking them with the whips. The women did not shrink back, but held out their palms, fighting one another to get flogged. Some of the men struck the women on the body, aiming for more sensuous places than their outstretched hands, but the women did not seem to mind. In fact, they offered themselves wholeheartedly to the whip-not just common women but the most dignified in all of Rome. Kleopatra recognized Porcia and her sister Junia Terentia in the front of the crowd, their white palms outstretched, their chests raised high, laughing as they received their blows.
“What does this mean?” Kleopatra asked.
“They believe the whipping makes them fertile,” Hammonius said. “Every year after the festival, there are wondrous stories of women long past the years when conception is seemly, who find themselves with great swollen bellies. For the women already with child, it is said that the whipping makes their deliveries go quickly and with ease.”
“It is a miracle that Calpurnia is not among them, chasing the whip,” she said. But Calpurnia remained in her seat to the far right of Caesar’s throne, surrounded by women her age who did not participate.
One by one, after the men had performed the ritual, they passed before Caesar and hailed him, and he raised his increasingly regal hand and hailed them back.
The only runner who did not carry a whip was the eldest, Antony. He was heavier than the others, fuller in chest and thigh, meaty even. The young ones had the finer musculature of boys turning into men, whereas Antony had already accomplished that feat and was a keen specimen of the sex, or so Kleopatra thought as her eyes followed him. In his hands was a white crown covered in laurel leaves, the diadem of a monarch. He held it high above his head for all to see, showing it to the crowd as if he were trying to sell it. Then he knelt before Caesar, bowed his head dramatically, and offered him the crown.
Suddenly, there was immense silence, as quiet in its magnitude as the noise that had come before it. Kleopatra held her breath. This was the test that they had so carefully planned. Caesar, before every important personage in Rome and many who were not so crucial, would reject the crown. If the majority protested and encouraged him, he would accept it-publicly for all to see, not quietly and as a result of some conspiracy that his opponents could criticize and challenge.
Kleopatra had supported this plan. “If Rome is a Republic, and if the overwhelming majority of the Republic wishes you to be king, then you must accept their wishes.”
“Paradoxical but true, my dear,” he had said. Antony had agreed and had invented the particulars of how and when it would happen. When Antony laid out the details, Caesar had said that he possessed the dramatic talents of a Euripides, and Antony had grinned broadly like a boy
“Take it away, my son,” Caesar called to Antony, and the crowd exploded, some cheering the refusal, others begging Caesar to take it. Antony pretended that Caesar had offended him. He pulled his head back and scowled, first at Caesar, then at the crowd, turning far to his right and to his left for all to see the displeasure on his face. He called for three of his associates to lift him on their shoulders. Carried forward as if mounted on some lumbering animal, he approached the Rostra once more and, this time, tried to place the crown on Caesar’s head. Caesar waited for a moment and then shielded himself with his hand, turning the crown away. The crowd now began to cheer more and more, chanting the name of Caesar. Kleopatra thought it difficult to gauge their reaction. She imagined that it could easily be construed that they wished Caesar to take the crown. And she wished he would accept it just to see the reaction. After all, if the response was negative, he could always give it back. “If the majority objects, you can take it from your head, fling it to the ground, and stomp on it!” she had told him.
But Caesar was acting conservatively. Antony proffered the crown once again, and this time, Caesar shook his head slowly and dramatically in the negative for all to see. Then, according to plan, he called out to Lucius Cotta to have the event recorded in the public records.
“Let it be written that on this day, the fourteenth of February, before the people of Rome, Caesar was thrice offered the crown of a monarch and thrice he refused it.”
Even to the ear of a queen who wished to hear otherwise, the Roman people unmistakably cheered his words.
The Vestal Virgins, the High Priestesses of Rome, keepers of the flame of the hearth-goddess, Vesta, that lit every Roman fire and burned day and night atop her temple, were not above the bribe. In addition to this duty, they also vaulted in their temple all official Roman documents, holding them in safety and secrecy. Hammonius had made contact with one of the youngest, Belinda, whose bitterness at her family for forcing her to forsake the love of a man and honor them with her position made her amenable to betrayal. She feared for her life, so that his discretion was mandatory. He swore it on all manner of gods and principles, and, to the best of his ability, made the queen swear the same, though he was but her servant and unable to enforce anything upon her. “Please swear it on the memory of your father,” he implored her. “For the young woman will be flung into the Tiber if she is found out.”
And so Kleopatra promised it, knowing that the information she gleaned would have to remain private.
Caesar had made a will. He retired to a country estate to document his final wishes, and he refused to reveal its contents. “I am not so very old”,’ he told her, “that we should concern ourselves with the advent of my demise. But I am planning a two-year campaign, and the gods may have it that it is my last. I do not wish my estates to be challenged. Rome does not need to fight more internal battles over money and property. And besides, I have already told you that it is illegal according to Roman law to leave property to a foreigner, which, regrettably, until we can change the law, our son must be regarded as such.”
“And that is that?” she asked.
“Yes, my dear, that is that.”
He promised that as soon as he was able to declare victory over Parthia, his friend and supporter Lucius Cotta along with a group of others would put forth the bill that Caesar be given the special privilege of marrying any number of wives he wished in order to produce an heir. And no one, not Cicero, not Brutus, not the most strident of constitutionalists, would contest it if Caesar had added the vast and thus far unconquerable territory of Parthia to the empire.
“It is the most expedient solution, Kleopatra. I will not have to alienate my countrymen by putting Calpurnia away. You and I will marry in Egypt, and there I will be your king. I will remain Rome’s dictator until someone has a better idea. Our son will be legitimate, you will be my wife, and we will proceed from there.”
She knew that anything more in her favor was impossible, but she wanted a guarantee of some sort, which neither Caesar nor the gods could give. She would have to take yet another risk in a lifetime whose path looked like one long backbone of risk upon risk.
“My darling, you look at me most pitifully, as if our son requires my money for his daily bread,” Caesar said. “Unlike you, I have no title that I might pass to him. It is merely a question of some money-much less than you yourself possess. Please be reasonable. This is the best we can hope for at this time.”
Still, she wondered if he was covering up something, so she gave Hammonius a purse heavy with gold to pass quietly to Belinda, who reported the contents of the will. That maiden informed Hammonius that the Roman people were Caesar’s primary heir. He was leaving a massive portion of his fortune to the individual citizens of Rome. His secondary heir, who was to receive virtually everything else was Octavian, the malnourished nephew.
“It’s only money, Your Majesty,” said Hammonius, and Kleopatra agreed. “And your son is a king, with a king’s treasure. Money is the single ingredient of his power that he need not acquire from his father.”
Marcus Lepidus had the finest mansion in the city of Rome-or the finest one paid for with his own money and not stolen in the war, Antony joked. Kleopatra was a guest in that home for the week so that she might enjoy more time with Caesar in the days before he left Rome. Little Caesar remained behind at the villa under Charmion’s supervision, and Kleopatra wished that she might have used those final days together to further imprint the affection of father upon son, but Caesar did not want the boy to stay in the city, where he might be vulnerable to foreign diseases and to the dictator’s own enemies.
They were gathered around ten large round tables, the men reclining on couches and the women sitting in chairs as was Roman custom. It was the fourteenth of March, the month of Mars, the Roman war god, and Caesar was to depart in four days to launch the greatest campaign in Rome’s seven-hundred-year history. Lepidus had gathered Caesar’s most faithful friends and supporters to honor him at a dinner. It would certainly be two years before they saw the great man on home soil again.
“Marcus Brutus is conspicuously absent,” Kleopatra whispered to Caesar and Lepidus. “In fact, none of Servilia’s clan is here.”
“Oh, it is more fun without Brutus’s somber countenance to rain on our fun,” Lepidus replied.
“He is serious by nature,” said Caesar. “It is not an easy temperament to disguise for the sake of socializing.”
Antony was festive throughout the meal, proposing toasts to the future, and lavishing the attention he had previously given to Kleopatra upon his wife, Fulvia. She was a tall woman, fair-skinned and striking, with almost black eyes and dark hair hennaed to a deep red. Kleopatra noticed the respect she commanded from Antony’s peers. She spent the evening in deep conversation with one senator or another, whispering in emphatic tones about policy and civic affairs. Her opinion was sought, even courted. Despite the respect given her, and the smiles and caresses she received from her handsome husband, she was prone to frowning. The single line in her face cut across the space between her eyebrows like a deep canal, ruining the symmetry of her beauty. It seemed that she was as serious as Antony was playful, and he went out of his way to keep her in good humor.
A few nights before, Caesar had commented to Kleopatra in the privacy of their bedroom that he did not quite understand a man like Antony-a man who commanded legions of men, but was so susceptible to a woman. “When Antony was under the influence of the actress, he was debauched. Now that he is married to Fulvia, a taskmaster if there ever was one, he is a model statesman.”
“Perhaps women have greater influence than Romans give credit,” Kleopatra had answered, wondering where Caesar place
d her influence over him in the realm of his life.
“It makes me think of the ancient rituals where men dressed in women’s clothing to steal some of their mysterious and life-giving powers,” Caesar had said. “That was surely what Clodius was doing when he was caught with my wife Pompeia at the festival of the Good Goddess. He had donned women’s clothes, sneaked into the festival, and had his way with my wife on the couch. I believe he was trying to either steal her power, or steal mine through her.”
“The goddess gives life to all,” Kleopatra had said. “It is not a mistake to seek her wisdom and strength in the mortals of her sex.”
“My dear, you do not have to convince me of that fact.”
Tonight, after the meal, Antony worked his way around the room to Kleopatra’s table, whispering in her ear that he must talk to her.
“Would you like to take the air in the garden, Your Majesty?” he asked her aloud.
Kleopatra noticed that Fulvia’s gaze had followed Antony around the room and straight to the queen, who gave him her hand and allowed him to escort her outside, aware that the two black spies of Fulvia’s eyes did not leave them until they disappeared from the banqueting room. He led her into the small garden, for no mansions within the city limits had the sprawling manicured outdoor spaces such as she knew in Alexandria. But there were rows of potted citrus trees offering lemons and oranges, and ambitious climbing roses that crawled up the garden walls, mingling sweet pleasant smells. Antony led her to a secluded spot.
“What is it, Antony? You look so glum. What serious matter is causing you to interrupt your fun and risk your wife’s suspicions?”
Antony let himself smile again, but he had clearly not brought her into a private area just to play with her attentions. “Did you notice that Caesar didn’t eat a morsel of food?”
“He rarely does these days. I suppose the details of planning the campaign and the details of leaving Rome in secure hands have left little room for an appetite.”